Never Here
by frenchie93
Summary: Pre series AU. Dean never shows up in Palo Alto. He doesn't have a chance to do so because Sam finds him before. And Dean can tell something is wrong. Dean can always tell.


Summary: Pre series AU. Dean never shows up in Palo Alto. He doesn't have a chance to do so because Sam finds him before. And Dean can tell something is wrong. Dean can always tell.

Author's note: AU pre series but with some reference to a really brief scene in season five (nothing spoilerish, no worries). It's kinda important for you to read till the end, you'll see why. I hope you'll enjoy this story that came to me out of nowhere. Please let me know what you think.

Disclaimer: Supernatural isn't mine.

Warnings: Just some swearing, it is Dean's POV after all. And maybe some emotional stuff but you'll have to read to find out XD. Also deals with a sensitive subject, read with caution.

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Never Here

Sam shows up on a Saturday morning. The sun is not totally up yet, but you can tell that it's going to be one of those days. The days when everything is quiet, and peaceful, and just good. Very rare days. People all over the motel room are still sound asleep. Dean should be too. Except for some reason, Sam showed up. Sam who was gone for four years. For four fucking long years. Gone to Stanford to go study, and be normal, and probably find himself a nice girl. All of that without Dean. So when he knocks on the door of his motel room that Saturday morning, Dean doesn't quiet understand what's going on. It takes about a second to realize that he's not dreaming, that his little brother is really here, here with him, and not thousand of miles away. And then he finally comes to his senses and hugs the not so little guy. God he's missed him. Not that he will ever say so, not to anyone, not even under threat. But really he's missed Sam. And it's been four years, so if he seems like a girl for hugging his brother like that then so be it. He's about to ask him how he's doing when he remembers that really it's weird that Sam's here. For him to suddenly appears in his motel room. Something had to be wrong. Little brothers don't just show up after four years of radio silence just to say hi. Something bad must have happened. And Dean lost his cellphone yesterday while driving to get to this town, so if Sam was in trouble he couldn't have gotten a hold of him.

"Everything's okay man?"

He really hopes his voice didn't quaver too much. Shit, four years without his brother, and he's turn into a damn girl. Then Sammy answers him, with a smile that is nothing but dimples. So bright, so __Sammy__ , and says: "Yeah, everything's fine." Except there is something that is different, something that Dean can't put his finger on. Something in the kid's eyes looks different.

Soon they're both sitting near the table, drinking a beer, even if it's way to early to be doing so. Well, Dean is drinking but Sam is just holding the bottle. Dean cracks a joke or two, and Sam laughs, but really, something's wrong, Dean can tell. Dean can always tell. Privileges of older brothers. Or maybe just privileges of __Dean__. Time passes really fast, and Dean should just ask Sam why he's here. But he doesn't, he knows his brother and if he's not ready to talk about it, then Dean won't push him. Not yet at least. Dean won't ask, the kid will come around, he usually does so.

They talk about everything. Dean about wendigos, and vengeful spirits, and witches, god he really __hates__ those bitches. And Sam talks about pre-law school, and exams, and a nice girl he fell in love with, and about this whole new world. A world that had always existed, within reach. A world that Sam dared to try and go for. But something about his tone isn't right. He's not talking about it like something he has, but like something he once had and lost. It feels wrong, yet Dean doesn't say a thing. Neither of them brings up the sore subject of Dad, not completely at least. When Sam asks how he's doing, Dean just shrugs and say that he hasn't heard from him since last Wednesday. Perfectly normal for John Winchester. And that's a closed subject.

Three days of just hanging around and Dean is truly worried now. Something's wrong with Sam. Something is really wrong with his kid. First, there is the deflecting. Sam has always been good at deflecting conversations, but seriously if he ignores him one more time when Deans asks him why he's here, he's going to punch him in the face, __hard__. Then, there's the coughing. Since he turned up he hasn't stop having those weird ,out of control coughs, as if the room was full of smoke. Which it wasn't. Dean is starting to wonder if maybe Sam is going to drop a bomb on him and tell him that he's sick. Not the "I have a bad cold" kind of sick, more like the "I have lung cancer even though I never smoked in my entire life" kind of sick. And that's just impossible, no way, cause Sam is healthy. And maybe Dean is an idiot for thinking that, but Winchesters don't get taken out by _ _cancer__. Just no. But still when Sam has yet another coughing fit it takes all of his resolution not to drag his ass to the nearest ER just to be sure everything's fine. And then there is the not eating, not even a __salad.__ And there's the fact that Sammy is sweating his ass off all day. The first night, Dean is awakened by Sam trashing on the floor with the sheets. On the floor because the little shit wouldn't take away the bed from Dean. But the point was that he was restless, sweating, and kept saying something about burning up, and when Dean touched his forehead to check for a fever the kid was cold, which is kinda of hard to be when you're sweating. The next day Dean looks up on the internet the symptoms of sweating and cough and comes up with nothing solid. But he doesn't give up, he will find what's wrong, the alternative is just not an option.

It's two in the afternoon when Dean is putting on a hoodie and Sam has a weird expression on his face when he asks him: "You cold?"

"Dude come on it's like zero degrees in here how can you be not cold?"

The answer doesn't come, but Sam looks at him and all he can see is sadness, sadness and regrets. Dean doesn't know how it got there.

"Tell me about mom."

They went to the beach, the __beach__ , because Sam said he wanted to go there and who was he to deny him of such a simple thing. Dean thought that finally he was going to tell him what was wrong, but no, apparently Sam wanted to talk about their mom. The question caught him off guard. Their mom had always been a taboo subject. So when Sam asks him like that, out of nowhere, it does nothing to reassure him. Something is terribly wrong with Sam.

"She was great, I don't know, she was just mom ya know. All soft and smiling all the damn time. Smiling at you, and Dad, and me. Like she won the lottery. Huh, crazy right? Anyway she had taken this weird habit when she tucked me in to say that angels were watching over me. And she waited until I said "and i'm watching over you" before kissing me goodnight. And her laugh man, I wish you could remember it. God I loved her laugh. And she loved you. She loved you more than anything Sammy. She loved us all."

He's practically babbling at this point, and he's absolutely, undeniably, having a chick flick moment with his brother. But damn, maybe talking about their mom isn't so bad after all. All this time he's been holding onto his memories of her, but maybe talking about it with Sammy wasn't about letting her go, maybe it was about sharing, and reliving, and making her here somehow, here with them. He feels cold again. He's been feeling cold the past few days, while Sammy was so hot. Two opposites, always so different and yet so close.

"Thank you Dean, thanks."

Sam's voice seems so far off, like he's not really here. And Dean wants to tell him that there is not need for thanks, there never has been between them. But when he looks up he sees a strange color in Sammy's eyes for a brief moment.

On the fifth day that Sam's here, he finds Dean's cell phone. Like the damn thing disappeared out of nowhere just to reappear here, in his brother's huge hands.

"Awesome man, I thought I lost the thing before getting here. "

"Glad I could help. Look Dean, I gotta go do something okay. I'll be back in a few hours."

He doesn't let him a chance to say anything because he's already out of the door. __Oookay, not weird at all__. He doesn't have time to give his thoughts much consideration because the cellphone starts ringing, back on duty already. Maybe he should have never answered the damn thing, maybe sometimes you're better off not knowing.

"Sir, I'm very sorry to inform you that your brother died in a fire in his apartment a few days ago. We were able to ID what remained of the body. We've been trying to contact you the last few days. There is still an investigation going on to try and determine the cause of the fire but it's going to be hard to tell. There is nothing that indicates the reason of the fire. His girlfriend survived but she's still in shock and she hasn't been able to tell us what happened. So far nothing has been found. I'm very sorry but there is no mistake. Sir, are you still here. Sir?"

He doesn't even take the time to answer. The phone weights a tone in his hand. Sam's not dead, that's just impossible, __impossible__. Sam is safe here with him. Where he fucking __belongs__ okay. Sam was just __here__ minutes ago. Dean is having troubling breathing, god how could the air turn around like that in the split of a moment. From light to thick, from easy to __unbreathable__. Dean isn't here, he really isn't, he is not in some shitty room hearing about his dead brother. That didn't happened. That just didn't happened. If he focuses enough, maybe he can make sense of it, make sense of it all. Sam was here with him, not in Palo Alto, in some random apartment, dying in a __fire__. A fire, seriously that had to be a fucking joke, a twisted, awful, heart wrenching joke. It just doesn't make sense. But then Dean starts to put two and two together when he remembers the past few days. The constant coughing, the strange color in Sammy's eyes, yellow, yes that was it, yellow, the color of fire. And the coldness, Jesus Christ, he's been so cold since Sammy showed up. And Sammy kept saying he was hot, felt so hot and __burning__. Shit, shit, shit, shit. The cellphone, the fucking lost phone that Sammy just found out of nowhere. Shit. Shit. The fact that somehow Sammy just knew where to find him. Without calling him and asking him, and it's not like he could have gotten the location out of their dad, because their dad had been unreachable. But he knew because death had it's perks. Like being able to track down your older brother no matter what.

If he closes his eyes tight enough, he can almost picture him and Sammy at thirteen. On a perfect fourth of July night, watching fireworks, and pretending for half a second that the world wasn't full of shit. __A memory close to heaven__.

The next hours are all a blur. Dean trying to chase down Sam who just left minutes ago, trying to call him, fucking voicemail of course. Sam who is harder to track than a ghost, a fucking __ghost__. Dean calling back the medical examiner, to have more information, only to have the guy say that really he should just come down to Palo Alto. Dean driving there, faster than he's ever driven in his entire life. Way too fast to be safe, but fuck safety, fuck everything and everyone. Because Sam might be dead. Might be, okay, just __might__ , Dean can't believe it yet, he just can't. But somehow Dean knows, the reality of it all is starting to sink in. Or maybe he's the one sinking. Who knows. Dean finally arrives three hours later. It takes him about two days of researching, and investigating, and getting angry at stupid useless people. Two days of trying to talk to the girlfriend, Jessica, beautiful girl really, maybe under different circumstances he would have made some nasty remark, but not now. She's a dead end anyway, she's completely catatonic, unresponsive, __shocked__. And after all of it, the conclusion is still the same. Sam's dead. Dean doesn't have a brother anymore. He can't help it but his mind keeps going back to that motel room with Sammy, over-analyzing every little detail that he failed to notice in time. But the truth also remains the same, Sam was never here. He wasn't in that room with him because Sam died in Palo alto on November 2nd. He was never really here. And in the end it only means one thing: Dean's got work to do.

The End

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Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed it. Only one way to let me know: by leaving a comment!


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